Fiji soldiers Golan Heights bound

11:16 Today (June 27, 2013)

Taken from/By: FBC News
Report by: Christopher Chand

Soldiers bound for Golan Heights have departed Nadi this morning onboard the charted Euro Atlantic Boeing 767 aircraft after close to an 11 hour delay.

Families braved the rain to stand near the Nadi Airport security fence waving good bye before the plane departed shortly after 10am.

It was an emotional farewell for the 171 soldiers, many relatives broke down in tears knowing well the danger of the conflict in Syria.

It is believed the flight was delayed while authorities were waiting for clearance for the aircraft to land at Beirut on route to Golan Heights near the Syria – Israel border.

The troops are part of a 12 month deployment team with the UN Disengagement Observer.

Russia evacuates Tartus, also military, diplomatic personnel from Syria. High war alert in Israel

DEBKAfile Video 
June 26, 2013, 5:11 PM (IDT)



Shortly after the DEBKA aired a special video on the Syrian war’s widening circle, Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, that the evacuation which had begun Friday of all military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was now complete, including the Russian naval base at Tartus.

“Russia decided to withdraw its personnel because of the risks from the conflict in Syria, as well as the fear of an incident involving the Russian military that could have larger consequences,” said a defense ministry official in Moscow. He stressed that a 16-ship naval task force in the eastern Mediterranean remains on post and arms shipments, including anti-air weapons, would continue to the Syrian government in keeping with former contracts.

In another sign of an impending escalation in Syria, the Israeli Golan brigade staged Wednesday an unannounced war maneuver on the Golan, attended by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and top army chiefs. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron called the government’s National Security Council into session in Downing Street on Syria. Opposition leader Ed Milliband was invited to attend the meeting, a custom observed only when issues of the highest security importance are discussed.

Earlier Wednesday, DEBKAfile carried the following report in its special video presentation under the heading: Putin and Obama cross swords on Syrian. What Next?

The sullen confrontation between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland last week condemned Syria to five months of escalating, unresolved vicious warfare – that is until the two leaders meet again in September.

For now, tempers are heating up between Washington and Moscow on Syria and other things too, notably the elusive American fugitive Edward Snowden.

US and Israeli intelligence watchers see the Syrian crisis entering seven ominous phases:

1. A five-month bloodbath centering on the battle for Aleppo, a city of 2.2 million inhabitants.

The Syrian army plus allies and the fully-mobilized opposition will hurl all their manpower and weapons into winning the city.

Military experts don’t expect the rebels to hold out against Assad’s forces beyond late August.

2.  Neither side has enough manpower or game-changing weaponry for winning the war outright.

That is, unless Presidents Obama or Putin steps in to retilt the balance.

3. The US and Russia are poised for more military intervention in the conflict up until a point just short of a military clash on Syrian soil – or elsewhere in the Middle East. US intelligence analysts have judged Putin ready to go all the way on Syria against the US - no holds barred.

The Russian president is meanwhile deliberately goading Washington and raising temperatures by playing hide-and-seek over the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, charged with espionage for stealing and leaking classified intelligence. At home, he is considered variously as a traitor and a brave whistleblower.

For several hours Snowden vanished between Hong Kong and Moscow – until the Russian president admitted he was holed up in the transit area of Moscow airport and would not be extradited by Russia to the United States.

4.  Iran, Hizballah and Iraq will likewise ratchet up their battlefield presence.

5. A violent encounter is building up between Middle East Shiites flocking to Syria to save the Assad regime alongside Russia, and the US-backed Sunni-dominated rebel forces.

It could scuttle the secret US-Iranian negotiating track on its nuclear program, which was buoyed up by the election of the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran.

6.  The Geneva-2 Conference for a political solution for the Syrian crisis is dead in the water. Moscow and the US are divided by unbridgeable issues of principle, such whether Bashar Assad should stay or go and Iranian representation. 

7.  So long as the diplomatic remains stuck in the mud, the prospects of a regional war spreading out of the Syrian conflict are rising. Iran, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon may be dragged in at any moment – if they have not already, like Lebanon.

A small mistake by one of the Syrian warring parties in Syria could, for example, touch off Israeli retaliation and a wholesale spillover of violence.

Iran secretly building in Port Sudan military supply base for Syria, Hizballah

DEBKAfile Exclusive 
Report June 25, 2013, 10:24 AM (IDT)

A logistics base for handling tanks, missile systems, self-propelled artillery and other heavy weaponry bound for Syria and Hizballah is secretly under construction in a section of Port Sudan which Omar al Bashir has leased to Tehran, DEBKAfile reports exclusively from its military sources.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards engineers in civilian dress are overseeing the hundreds of Sudanese workmen laboring flat out to build Iran’s second Red Sea base after Assab in southern Eritrea.

As a safeguard against an Israeli strike, the new Iranian facility abuts directly on Port Sudan's oil exporting installations, through which South Sudan, Israel’s ally, exports its oil, the new republic’s only source of revenue which also pays for its purchases of Israeli arms.

To give the military port a civilian aspect and suggest that Iranian warships no longer visit the port, Tehran has switched to commercial cargo vessels and oil tankers for delivering weapons for its Syrian and Hizballah allies through Port Sudan.

Still, Western intelligence sources watching the work are certain that the new Iranian facility is a military port in every sense of the word. It is similar to the Russian naval base built at the Syrian port of Tartus, except for being twice as large and capable of accommodating Iran’s largest war ships as well as submarines. Tehran is taking advantage of the strong military and intelligence ties it has developed with Sudan’s ruler Bashir for streamlining the weapons supply route to its embattled allies.

The Iranian section of the port has a fence with watchtowers and will soon acquire air defense systems. It is guarded by Revolutionary Guards sentries wearing civilian clothes and Sudanese soldiers.

The new facility will enable Iran to transfer larger shipments of heavier weapons than the air corridor used until now to drop military equipment for the Syrian and Hizballah armies. The light and medium hardware will continue to be delivered by air, but the sea route for the heavy stuff will be cut in half by the large weapons depot the Iranians are building at the Sudanese Red Sea port.

This will make it possible to ship items to their destination from the Red Sea through Suez and on to the Mediterranean to meet needs arising urgently from war crises in Syria or potential conflicts with Israel.

Neither the US, Egypt or Israel has so far interfered with Iranian arms freighters navigating the Suez Canal on their way to Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah.

The Israeli Air Force has in the past struck four weapons convoys or targets in the Port Sudan area – two each in 2009 and in 2012.

PM leads Fijian delegation to Russia

11:30 Today (June 26, 2013)
Taken from/By: FBC News
Report by: Apisalome Coka

Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, has left Fiji as the head of the first ever official Fijian Government delegation to visit the Russian Federation.

The visit -which begins later this week – will see the Prime Minister hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, at his official residence outside Moscow.

While Bainimarama meets senior Russian officials, other members of the Fijian delegation will hold side meetings designed to foster relations in the areas of trade, education and other areas of cooperation.

The Government says the meetings underline Fiji’s robust foreign policy, which is aligned with other Pacific island nations and seeks new opportunities beyond its traditional regional partners.

The visit – it says – also demonstrates the expanding relationship between Fiji and Russia since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1974 and especially since an exchange of ambassadors in 2010.

Fiji’s resident Ambassador to Japan, Isikeli Mataitoga, is accredited to the Russian Federation as Fiji’s non-resident Ambassador.

The relationship has also strengthened since the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, visited Fiji in February 2012.

Following the Prime Minister’s official visit, Fiji’s Defence Minister, Joketani Cokanasiga, and two senior officials will attend the International Maritime Defence Show 2013 to be held in St Petersburg from July 3rd to July 7th.